Unfortunately, the only way to block spammers, hackers and content scrapers is through a mass banning of IPs. The problem with the Chinese hackers is so severe that it is literally taking thousands of servers down while an attack are being launched.

The latest WordPress Brute Force Attack is one of the most difficult to block because it consists of hits from over 90,000 IPs on infected servers and PCs around the world.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -- Benjamin Franklin

Running my own server allows for the one .htaccess file to apply to all of the websites. I like this way of working where you only need to update one file to nip things in the bud before all of the log files are polluted.

Same with WordPress updates, now I only have one install of the script to deal with.

Ideally, the firewall would block them before they get to the server. But for me, the firewall admin is too tricky.

This kind of service would be a great selling point for specialized hosting I think where you don't need to install copies of popular scripts on your hosting directly. And the hosting company blocks bad bots etc.

I'm amazed on the conversations after I have read all of your discussion, and I must say that you are much wiser than them (hackers) I'm not familiar in programming languages, but I understand the analysis happening in this thread. I must say that if you are a brilliant website developer or programmer use it in proper ways.